Channel 4 has produced a new video with Tom Holland: ISIS: The Origins of Violence. This Breitbart article includes a 40sec trailer. The whole thing is 1hr 35 minutes long and should be available on demand for 4 weeks. I don't know if it's supposed to be repeated but the last one had its repeat pulled. I haven't watched it yet, it's difficult: you not only have to sign up and log in but you have to persuade your computer to play Flash videos.Let's hope someone puts it on line like they did the last one.

Muslim Group Angered by Brit Documentary Asking, ‘How Islamic is Islamic State?’British historian and broadcaster Tom Holland’s latest documentary, ‘ISIS: The Origins of Violence’, has angered a leading Muslim organisation.

Prior to its broadcast on May 17th, Holland said the question his Channel 4 documentary sought to answer was “basically this: just how Islamic are the Islamic State?”

The bestselling author courted controversy in 2014 when he wrote that “The grim truth is that sanctions can be found in the Qur’an, in the biographies of Mohammad and in the histories of early Islam for much that strikes the outside world as most horrific about the Islamic State”.

The documentary begins in Paris at the site of the Bataclan massacre, where 89 people were tortured and killed.

It then wends its way eastward, past Vienna – “Muslim armies came this far twice,” Holland reminds the viewer, pointing out a town “where they massacred everyone” – and on to Istanbul.

The historian suggests that the idea of jihad as holy war first took hold in the Islamic world after the Arabs failed in their first attempt to conquer the city, then known as Constantinople.

He describes how these first invaders were elevated to the status of martyrs, visiting a shrine established to honour one of them when it finally fell to the Turks in 1453, centuries later.

Istanbul was the seat of the caliphs, who served as the Prophet’s direct successors, for hundreds of years under the Ottoman sultans – until the empire was defeated by Britain and her allies during the Great War, and overthrown by the Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

“I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea,” he once said. “My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. ”

Atatürk, although best known in the West for his persecutions of the Armenians, also implemented a series of aggressively secular policies designed to confine Islam to private life, and abolished the caliphate.

But the idea survived in the Arab world, Holland claims, inspiring Osama bin Laden and, ultimately, the foundation of the present-day caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Holland visits an ancient Christian monastery in northern Iraq, just miles from the borders of the Islamic State, occupied by a bare handful of monks and priests who tell them their faith has no future in the area, but they remain out of a sense of duty.

Holland contrasts the Christian monastic tradition with that advocated by the Prophet: “Our monasticism is jihad in the cause of God. Our monasticism is the crying of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ on hilltops.”

The historian explores the plight of the Yazidis, visiting the shattered city of Sinjar and the holy shrine at Lalish, in the Kurdish mountains.

He describes how, unlike the Christians and Jews whose status as “People of the Book” can allow them to survive under Islamic rule as second-class citizens, provided they pay a special tax called the jizya, the Yazidis are exposed to slavery, forced conversion or death.

Speaking to Abu Sayyaf, a Salafi cleric and leader of the Jordanian Jihadi Salafist Movement, Holland is told that shariah does not allow for the Yazidis to live under the jizya.

“The same rules do not apply to the Mushrikun,” he states. “No jizya. Nothing. Either Islam or death.”

The documentary angered a number of British Muslims, in particular the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK).

The MPACUK, a verified organisation which describes itself as “the UK’s leading org for empowering Muslims to focus on intelligent political activism to demand our rights”, took particular issue with the fact that Holland had consulted Israeli experts for the programme.

Holland appeared unmoved, however, and accused the group of harbouring anti-Semitic attitudes.

“Honestly, Britain’s Muslims deserve so much better than to have sinister clowns like MPACUK claim to represent them,” he said.

I've watched this now and found it a mixed bag. The first thing is that the 1 hour videos linked from YouTube may well be the full thing - there were so many adverts that they may have made up all of the missing 30 minutes!The second is that violence there was indeed - Holland dwelt at length on ISIS's violent doings and showed very thoroughly how evil they are.Beyond that, he admitted that their ideology is rooted in Islam but steered towards saying that they had veered away from early Islam rather than admitting that it is the "moderate mainstream" Muslims who have veered away from it. He even cited the recent obfuscations about Aisha's age as demonstrating that Islam could change under the influence of the West.He dated jihad-as-warfare from their eventual success in taking Constantinople, which he says they took as a model for the future of Islam. He even said that they took the excesses of the French Revolution for the model of their terror.With critics like this, who needs apologists?No wonder the uproar against the programme has been muted (I wouldn't even have known about it if I didn't check Breitbart regularly).Summary: a disappointment but still worth watching. You may find me too dismissive.PS: he gave credit to Napoleon for introducing science and the printing press to Egypt. It could be that Napoleon sowed the seeds of civilising Islam, but then again maybe without that there would have been fewer bombs and without that printing press there would be vastly fewer Korans about...

'It's a choice between the MONSTERS and the MANIACS'Dr Julian Lewis M.P. (Chair, UK Defense Committee) on the conflict in Syria

Isis: The Origins of Violence makes some strong points but I wish Tom Holland just said what he thinks<snip>Overall, Wednesday’s programme proved an unusually well-informed and at times intellectually thrilling watch. But, like Islam: The Untold Story, its underlying sense of nervousness also made you want to travel to some parallel universe in which Tom Holland was able to say exactly what he thinks.

Douglas Murray has a less jaundiced view of the programme than mine, in The Spectator. (The paywall seems to come and go, it looks to be off at the moment.)

The British broadcaster brave enough to discuss Islamic violence<big snip>The documentary will doubtless have many detractors from the many people – non-Muslim as well as Muslim – who want to cover over those IEDs. Holland’s documentary profoundly and carefully reveals why this is such a terrible mistake, and why from London and Paris to Istanbul and Mosul, the effects of failing to be honest in our assessment of the past has such serious repercussions for our present and future.